


Onward

by Diary



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Awkward Conversations, Bechdel Test Fail, Canon Disabled Character, Drunken Shenanigans, F/M, Jaime Lannister & Brienne of Tarth Friendship, Late Night Conversations, Love, Male-Female Friendship, POV Brienne of Tarth, POV Female Character, Past Cersei Lannister/Jaime Lannister, Post-Season/Series 04 AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-25
Updated: 2016-03-25
Packaged: 2018-05-28 21:49:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6346684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Diary/pseuds/Diary
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A look at a drunk Brienne and Jaime and the aftermath, all seen from Brienne's POV. Complete.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Onward

**Author's Note:**

> I do not own Game of Thrones.

Brienne knows she’s only ever gotten drunk once in her life and would never stoop to having a drinking contest.

She also knows she’s laughing louder than she’s likely ever laughed in her life and feels as if tiny bugs are scurrying around in her body. “You used sorcery,” she accuses Jaime with a poke. “I would have never entered- Sorcery combined with your godlike looks and charm. Or is that all an illusion? I saw you naked at-”

“My lady,” Pod exclaims louder than she thinks is necessary. “Ser Jaime didn’t use sorcery. Ser Jaime, I beg you, _don’t respond_.”

Jaime shrugs. “Quite the talkative drunk, I see. Have to do this more often.”

“Least I’m not crying,” she announces. Pod brings his head down and knocks it against the table, and while she’s leaning over to check on him, she continues, “I’ve seen you cry. Didn’t like it. Couldn’t help.”

He nods and takes another drink. “Somethings, you just can’t.”

“If you weren’t so inf- infru- so stupid,” she decides, “I’d cut your meat and break you bread. But you- something. I couldn’t get your armour off without Pod’s help, but I didn’t take an hour just to get it out.”

“My lady, why don’t I take you to your room, help you out of your armour, and then, take Ser Jaime to bed? We all need to get up earlier, remember?”

Jaime gives him a look she thinks might be suspicious. “You truly love her, don’t you, Podrick?”

She bursts into a fit of giggles.

“Ser Jaime, you sent me with her to protect me. I admire Lady Brienne and am proud to be her squire.”

“Yes, but that was before Tyrion told me about the whores and I saw you curled around her in bed.”

“Did you just call me a whore,” she demands.

She wonders if using Oathkeeper against the one-handed man who gave it to her in the first place would be as bad as she’d usually consider it to be.

Why would she usually consider it to be, anyways?

She remembers how much she wanted to beat him senseless when she tried to escort him to King’s Landing.

“No, he didn’t,” Pod says. Reaching over and grabbing the hand reaching for Oathkeeper, he continues, “My lady, Lord Tyrion paid some women at Littlefinger’s brothel to- in repayment for saving his life.” Letting go of her hand, he tells Jaime, “And since you’ve joined us, I’ve always shared a room with you at inn’s while Lady Brienne had her own, and when we sleep on the ground, you always sleep between us. There’s nothing inappropriate about a squire sleeping close to his knight, ser.”

“I’m not a knight,” she reminds them. “Besides, Podrick likes me to wrap around him. You probably don’t wrap around him the right way to help him not be scared of sleep.”

Jaime glares, and a delightfully red Pod mutters, “My lady- Ser- I think you both need sleep.”

“One more round,” Jaime declares.

She nods in agreement.

Pod mumbles something about the gods giving him strength.

“You’re plenty strong,” she tells him and feels warmth spread when he gives her a sweet smile.

“Another round,” Jaime insists.

…

“Are you absolutely sure Sansa and Arya sent ravens telling us to sleep and we’d meet them in the morning?”

Something about this doesn’t quite make sense, but she can’t figure out what.

If her luck is finally changing, if she can finally help those girls, she isn’t going to question the seven.

“Yes, my lady,” Pod answers. He pushes her with one hand and drags Jaime by the left wrist.

“He’s lying,” Jaime declares. “He just doesn’t want us to drink more. I’m a Lannister, I can-”

“Pod doesn’t lie,” she says. “Pod, let me sees the notes.”

“Uh- um, er, that is- I accidentally dropped them in the fire, my lady. Yes, that’s it. I’m sorry. That was, uh, very clumsy of me, please, watch your step, Ser Jaime. My lady, why don’t you hold onto the railing?”

“But how will know where to meet them,” she asks in horror.

“I know for sure they said they’d come here,” Pod tells her.

He all but shoves her into his and Jaime’s room. “Ser, why don’t you lie down while I help Lady Brienne?”

“I’ve seen you naked, too,” Jaime announces. “Don’t you remember, Brienne, how you stood up in front of me. I was-”

“Of course, I remember. That’s what I was saying earlier,” she says.

She worriedly wonders if Pod is going to choke.

“I could beat you now.”

“Ladies Sansa and Arya,” Pod almost snaps at them. “That is, we should look nice and non-bruised for them, shouldn’t we, my lady? Ser Jaime? Please, no duelling or any other form of combat.”

“You wouldn’t have to beat me,” she says. “If you wanted me, you could just have me. Although, I suppose I shouldn’t do that to your sister.”

“My lady, let’s finish taking your armour off in your room,” Pod says in a strangled voice. Pushing her almost roughly, he continues,

“Now, please. Walk, I beg you.”

Instead, she puts her wrist against his forehead. “Are you quite well, Podrick? You seem very odd tonight. You’re not getting sick, are you? We can’t have the Stark girls getting sick. Just another failure on my part.”

She and Pod both jump when they realise Jamie is standing right next to them.

“Podrick, leave. I need to talk to Brienne in private.”

“With all due respect, Ser Jaime, no,” Pod hisses.

“Podrick,” she scolds.

“I’m sorry, my lady,” he says with a soft look. “And you, Ser Jaime. But you’re both drunk, and I’m not- Any private conversations can wait until the morning.”

“Even with my one hand, I’d wager I can still cut you down,” Jaime says with a deadly calm. “Want to see, lad?”

Moving Pod behind her, she hotly informs him, “You will not harm my Pod. You may have done that horrible deed to little Brandon Stark to protect your sister and children, but you’re not hurting this one. Especially not with the Stark girls coming. They have every right to-“

“Is he like Renly,” Jaime inquires.

She shrugs. “Pod, those women the imp paid, were they men, by any chance?”

“That’s not what Ser Jaime meant, my lady,” he mutters. “Um, no, my lady. Please, let’s go to your room. After you’re settled, I’ll come back to Ser Jaime.”

“My brother hates that nickname.”

“And you want to kill your brother,” she points out.

“Only- only sometimes,” he miserably answers. She reaches over to pet his hair as he continues, “But then, I always thought, if I had to, I’d kill my father to protect him. It’s- it’s all wrong.”

Then, suddenly, he says, “Pod, leave. Brienne has Oathkeeper to protect herself.”

“Ser, I’m not-”

Brienne pushes him towards the door. “Go on, Pod. I’ll be there shortly.”

“My lady-”

“No arguing.”

“I’m waiting in the hall,” he says with a grimness she doesn’t like.

Once he’s out and the door’s shut, she finds Jaime standing closer than she’s remembered him doing in a long time and stroking her cheek with his hand.

She shivers in pleasure and leans into it.

“My sister will always be my sister. But we’re bad for each other. I’m not going to- ever again. Never. Would you really want me, Brienne?”

“Of course, I want you,” she says. A vague feeling of caution flitters through her, but she ignores it. “I’ve wanted you since you told me the truth about why you did all those terrible things.”

“I only have one hand.”

“And if you’d just let me break your bread and cut your meat, we wouldn’t have to wait so long for you to eat,” she replies. Didn’t we have this conversation earlier, she wonders. “It’s not as if your servants didn’t do that for you even before _Locke_ ,” she says with an angry shudder. 

He nods and looks at her in such a way she feels her breath shorten.

“Can I kiss you?”

She considers it. “The others made a bet about who could take my maidenhead. You wouldn’t be that sort of cruel, would you, Jaime Lannister?”

He moves his hand, and she whines.

“No,” he answers. “We’re, we’re probably too drunk to do that, anyways. I just want to kiss you and make you moan my name while I see your eyes. Will you let me, my lady? I promise I’ll stop if you don’t like something.”

She nods so hard her brain hurts.

There’s a whisper itching inside about how he doesn’t really want her, couldn’t, but she shakes her head and pulls his gold hand up. “Just you,” she says. “Off.”

The look he gives her makes her ask, “Did I do something wrong already?”

“No,” he answers with a softness she likes. “Help me, then.”

She’s not sure how, but they make it to the bed, and suddenly, she’s looking at his stump.

After carefully tracing it with her fingers, she leans down and kisses it. Then, feeling bold, she experimentally traces the scars with her tongue.

A noise startles her, and she looks up to find him gripping the bedsheets with his eyes closed and, to her amazement, a look of pleasure on his face she’s seen from accidentally walking in on men engaged in with women, and in one instance she never tries to think about, Renly and Loras.

Opening his eyes, he surges forward.

The kiss is better than she ever imagined, and she knows she has to meet the Stark girls in the morning, but she’d like to pretend for now it’ll last forever.

“Brienne.”

“You are very fast,” she realises when she opens her eyes and finds herself lying on the bed with him half on top of her.

He laughs.

She feels his fingers tracing under her skirt and upwards.

“I want to try something. Tell if you don’t like it.”

She nods.

“Please, keep looking at me,” he continues. “Do you know, when I first saw you, it was your eyes that made me look twice?”

“Jaime,” she gasps.

He stills.

“My name on your lips-”

“Well, if you don’t like, just tell me. Otherwise, stop stopping. Or-” Confused and irritated, she tugs at his hair. “I like what you’re doing.”

Laughing, he raises her skirt up. “Hopefully, you’ll like this, my lady.”

…

A splitting headache and a rush of memories wake Brienne up.

“Father, Mother, Warrior, Maiden, Crone, Smith, and Stranger,” she declares with little care if she’s saying them in the right order, “have mercy on me.”

Her armour is off, and so, to her horror, is the bottom of her smallclothes.

Wrapped around her is Jaime. His breath is heavy against her neck, and his left hand is curled around her wrist.

Moreover, she can feel the hardness beneath his breeches against her.

The memories refuse to leave and only make her recoiling stomach worse.

Taking a breath to steady herself only makes her acutely aware how desperately she needs to relieve herself.

There’s a chamber pot in the room, but she knows she can’t use it.

Carefully, she untangles herself from Jaime and gets off the too-small bed.

He mumbles, tries to re-establish contact, and then, curls around a pillow with a sigh.

Letting out a sigh of her own, she looks over at the armour on Pod’s bed, winces, and leaves without bothering to try to find her missing smallclothes.

When she gets to her room, she finds Pod sleeping on her bed.

As she’s debating whether she should wake him, he wakes on his own and jumps out of bed when his eyes land on her. “My lady-”

“Pod, I must relieve myself, and I don’t want anyone hearing. Please, just leave for a few moments.”

Thankfully, he does with nary a word.

…

Once she’s done, she goes out and finds Pod standing in the hallway with a tray of food. He’s close enough he’d hear if she called but hopefully far enough he didn’t hear her doing her business.

“I’m sorry,” she blurts out. “You really deserve someone better to serve than me and Jaime. I’m sorry for causing so much trouble and for embarrassing you. Thank you for managing to keep us from doing too much harm. I remember about the ravens. Tell me, did you have me believing anything else that one moment of common sense would have told me was false?”

He gives her a sweet smile. “No, my lady. And I’ve told you, I’m proud to be your squire.”

They go into the room, and she says, “I’ll need to get back soon. I don’t know what I’m going to say when he wakes up, but- Thank you, Pod.”

He hesitates and refuses to look at her. “If you need some moon tea, my lady, I can get some with little trouble.”

“No,” she says. “The seven know I’m not as much as an innocent as I was, but I am still a maid. But thank you.”

There’s no judgement, amusement, or scorn on his face when he nods. 

She sips the tea he’s brought, takes a bite of bread, and realises she can’t stomach anymore.

Breaking the bread up and cutting the meat, she says, “I’m going to take this to Jaime.”

“I could, my lady,” he hesitantly offers.

Knowing she’s going to need to talk privately with Pod later and find out what his thoughts truly are on all of this, whatever in the seven ‘this’ is, she shakes her head. “He and I need to talk, and I hope to be there when he wakes.”

She can’t say for sure why. For all she knows, he might prefer to wake up alone, but since she thinks she wouldn’t in similar circumstances-

…

When she gets to the room, he’s thrashing slightly with the pillow covering his head.

Concern fills her. “Jaime?”

He immediately stills, and it seems to take a lifetime for him to surface and look at her with teary, red-rimmed eyes.

Setting the tray down, she rushes over. “Are you hurt? Upset? Sick?”

He laughs slightly, and then, winces. “Everything hurts,” he tells her with a hoarse voice. Reaching up with his left hand, he touches his tearstained cheeks and squints. “Huh. I hate the bloody sun.”

Relieved, she sighs. “Close your eyes. I’ll wet a towel and put it over them. That’ll help.” Standing up, she continues, “I brought food and tea.”

He groans.

She brings the tray over, takes the towel, wets it, and comes to sit down. Part of her is tempted to put his head in her lap, but instead, she merely lays the towel over his eyes. “Open them when you’re ready.”

Reaching up to press at it, he says, “You left.”

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I needed to relieve myself and wasn’t sure what- how that would be after so much drink. I made Pod leave the room.”

He laughs, and even though it’s somewhat crackly, she takes comfort in it.

Sitting up, he removes the towel to reveal the worst of the redness has faded. “I suppose we should talk about what happened.”

“I suppose,” she echoes.

“Well, talk, then,” he prods. He hands her a piece of fruit followed by the knife.

Cutting it, she protests, “You should go first. This- I kissed a man, once, but it was only once and nothing like this. It certainly didn’t go any further. Whereas, you have gone much further in the past.”

“Is that a judgement, my lady,” he asks with an edge to his tone.

She frowns. “It’s a fact.”

He slumps.

Setting the fruit slices down, she offers, “With all my siblings dying before I could properly even know of them, let alone know them, I’ve never truly had any. There were good and bad Targaryens. Whatever the seven think of you and your sister, I don’t place much judgement on it. What you did to Brandon Stark- well, you’ve changed, and I do know you did it for fear of her life and your own innocent children. May you be judged for your past by them. I judge you for who you are now.”

Taking a small bite of bread, she finishes, “So, it’s just a fact. You’ve lain with a woman in the past. Therefore, you have more experience than I do.”

“I take it you’re not jealous, then,” he says with a hint of teasing.

“Why should I be?”

He nods. “Do you regret it?”

She hesitates and feels the air growing heavy.

The truth is always the best, she’s heard many times.

Though life has taught her this isn’t always true, she still likes to believe it.

“No,” she answers. “I’m sorry if you do, but I don’t.”

Setting down his fork, he reaches across and takes her hand. “I don’t regret it, Brienne.”

A relief she didn’t know she was desperate for until now settles over her.

It’s short-lived, however, and she finds herself saying, “I’m likely never going to take my place as Tarth’s heir. With Locke’s men, I fought because I didn’t want them. They didn’t have the right to me. But in truth, I don’t cling to the ideals of maidenhood as well as I probably should.”

When she stops and fully looks at him, he studies a piece of bread and moulds it in his hand. “I can hear the next part. ‘But’, ‘however’, ‘nevertheless’, ‘regardless’. So, just say it.”

“It wouldn’t be wise to do it again.”

The lines of his body tells her he isn’t happy with these words, and she half-expects him to inform her he wouldn’t want it, anyways, and she half-expects him to strike out with a different form of cruelty.

Instead, he nods, looks over, and retakes her hand. “No more drinking contests, then. When we sleep on the ground, Pod can be in the middle.”

His tone changes before she can answer, and he cheerfully asks, “I’m surprised you haven’t forced me to get ready for the long-awaited meeting with the Stark girls.”

She feels herself blush and turns away. “I will smother you.”

“No, you won’t,” he replies. “Oh, I’m sure Pod would help you with the body easily enough, but I should just become a ghost and haunt your dreams with pleasure you’ll have forever denied yourself.”

“You think very highly of yourself!”

Forcing her to turn her head back, he winks. “How can I not with the way you were-”

She abruptly stands. “I’m going to talk to Pod. Eat.”

Unfortunately, she can’t flee the room fast enough to escape the sound of his satisfied laughter.

…

She gently smacks Pod’s head when she sits down on the bed.

He manages to look at her without his face being too red.

“Go on,” she orders. “He’s not here, and you should know by now, though I might ignore you and insult you, it is safe for you to speak your mind to me.”

“Would you let him kill Lord Tyrion, my lady?”

Sighing, she rubs her head. “If we came across him, I would try to stop him, but I can’t promise I’d fight him, Pod. However, I wouldn’t begrudge you doing so. My loyalty is towards Sansa and Arya Stark, and while I will harm no innocents, I am prepared to fight anyone who stands in my way. If it ever came to it, I’d find a different sword and fight Ser Jaime. Some of your loyalty is towards Lord Tyrion, and I respect that. Ser Jaime- it’ll always be family for him. All the good and bad he’s done can be traced back to them. I pray, if he ever comes across his brother, that loyalty will hold, even if it’s solely against his wishes. But with so much hurt between them- who can say unless and until it happens?”

He nods. “Thank you, my lady.”

“Is that all?”

There’s a stretch of silence. “Ser Jaime is convinced I desire you, my lady.”

“Well, he’s an idiot, at times,” she answers. “Don’t worry, Pod. Even in my drunkenness, I spoke truthfully. If you challenge him, you’re on your own. Otherwise, I will not ever see him harm you.”

“Thank you,” he repeats.

…

When she goes back to his room, Jamie informs her, “I’ve paid the innkepper most handsomely to make up for the scene and noise made. All settled with Podrick?”

She nods. “Are you feeling better?”

“Still feel like shit,” he mutters. “You?”

“The same.”

“Onward, my Lady of Tarth?”

“Onward, Ser Jaime of Casterly Rock,” she answers.


End file.
